Same old Trouble

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A week of rioting in Belfast is a grim reminder that the community there remains deeply divided. Our correspondent talks to Protestants in the Shankill and finds the bitterness runs depressingly deep

Jason Jackson is only two so it takes a while to work out what he means when he pulls up his T-shirt, points to a scratch mark on his stomach and starts chanting “plees chot” over and over again. Eventually his grandmother, Jacqueline, translates for the benefit of the swelling crowd of friends, neighbours, relatives and journalists who have gathered on this working-class Belfast street to examine the grim aftereffects of four days of rioting.

“He’s saying the police shot him,” she says triumphantly, and half a dozen women hoist their hands to their hips in a show of sympathetic